I went to tell the most feared mob boss in the city that I was pregnant with twins, but I caught him with my sister instead.

Two weeks later, Evelyn found sanctuary in Oakhaven, a decaying mill town nestled deep in the mountains of western Massachusetts.

The town was dying. Half the storefronts on Main Street were boarded up, and the people who remained moved with the quiet, tired resignation of those who had been forgotten by the rest of the country.

It was perfect.

She rented a tiny, winterized cabin at the edge of the woods from an elderly woman named Martha, who didn't ask for a background check or a security deposit—only three hundred dollars cash on the first of every month.

Evelyn landed a job washing dishes and preparing vegetables at a local diner called The Rusty Anchor. The work was hard, her back ached by mid-afternoon, and her hands were constantly red from hot dishwater, but the physical exhaustion was a gift. It kept her from thinking.

It kept her from remembering the sound of Chloe’s laughter.

At night, sitting by the small wood stove in her cabin, Evelyn would pull out the ultrasound photo. The two tiny white shapes on the dark paper were growing. She could feel the subtle changes in her body now—the gentle rounding of her stomach, the tight ache in her breasts, the constant need for rest.

She was three months pregnant.

One night, as the wind howled through the pines outside, she picked up a local newspaper left behind on a diner table. On page four, a small society notice caught her eye: